Unless you’ve a maid, it’s damn near impossible to keep your house clean every single day. Either you’re too tired from work, too lazy, too intimidated, or kids ruin it every second they get, your house gets messy and stays messy. My house often looks like a tornado went through it and I always notice that it gets this way whenever I stray from my cleaning routine. I know, what a surprise, that my house got messy when I stopped cleaning it. I can’t believe it, either.
A cleaning routine made it easier to keep my house in order without making me feel overwhelmed and exhausted. There are already too many things in life making us feel that way.
Break it down into smaller sections.
Instead of viewing your whole house as messy and trying to tackle it in one go only to get exasperated, quit and then have to do the whole thing over again on the weekend, break it down. Focus only on one section of your house at a time, like the dining room or living room, or just the floors.
Designate Specific Days for Specific Chores
On Mondays and Fridays, I sweep and wash my floors. Rarely will I sweep or wash any other day unless I spill something. I know that I can ignore my floors until those two days, letting me either relax or focus on another part of my home.
Designate chores for specific days in your home. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays can be kitchen duty. Thursdays can be floors (not everyone is a stress cadet about clean floors like me and don’t need to wash them twice a week), Tuesdays laundry. Saturdays bathroom.
Find the days and balance that works for you, changing as needed.
Deep Clean the House Once a Month
Not the whole house. That would be insane. Who has time for that?! Break it down, yet again, and pick one area of the house to deep clean once a month. That means moving furniture to wash or vacuum under them, washing the baseboards, cleaning out and organizing closets.
You can use these deep cleaning months as a chance to go through your things and give away whatever you don’t need and buy what you’ve been desperately needing.
Divvy it up
Divvying up the chores makes everyone’s lives easier. Contrary to belief, one person doesn’t have to do all of the chores (unless you live alone, of course). Your kids, significant other, roommates, all should be helping out. Make a chore chart if you have to, but assign chores to specific people, that way you don’t have to worry about everything all at once, all the time.
Well, maybe assigning isn’t the way to go…maybe just have a jaunty little talk about it because no one likes being assigned chores. No one.
Hire it out
If you have to the means to and it’s something you absolutely hate, or need an extra hand with, just hire it out. Hate cutting the grass or always forget/don’t have time to? Hire a local neighbour kid or a company that does both grass cutting and snow removal. Need a little extra ummph in your cleaning? Get a maid to come in once a week or once a month. They’ll be able to get those bathrooms you thought were a lost cause sparkling, again.
